Prelude to Archaeology - 2024

I've mentioned it a while back, but this year's spring digging jaunt will again be to England, but to a different site along Hadrian's Wall.  

In other years I've been at Vindolanda, a Roman fort side run by the Trust of the same name.  Well, the Vindolanda Trust has a second site called Magna.  About 6 miles away, it had a preliminary dig last year and gets a full season/full teams excavation for 2024.

Anyway, just a couple of weeks now.  Almost within the long range - albeit inaccurate - weather forecasts that allow for final packing decisions.   A few views of Magna 2024....

The site before excavations.  It's mostly top layers on down this year.  Lots of cobbles.

The first crew on the site, well, they never got sunburned...

Recently a sharp eyed volunteer spotted a tiny glass bead covered in gold foil.  Somebody was sad to lose this 18 centuries ago.

I hope, nay, expect to be equally keen eyed.  After many years of doing this my archaeological "scanners" never turn off.  On my daily dog walks I'm always spotting coins and such, often at considerable distances.  

ADDENDUM

And here's the Latest.  A well!  Who knows what's at the bottom of that.

Wastrels and Scoundrels and Doggerel

I don't know if the world in general thinks much about words, their origins and their meanings.  I do, but must admit that it is a dangerous pursuit.  In our puzzling times - both knowledge and ignorance increasing apace - a word can mean radically different things to different people.  That alone makes the pursuit of etymology more than a minor hobby.  

There are a bunch of words that end with "-rel".  Most of them seem to have negative connotations.

A wastrel wastes things (I suppose typing on a keyboard for the internet counts as wasting time).

A scoundrel is not to be trusted.

Doggerel is bad poetry.

Scoundrel is a word of uncertain origins, possible from the Vulgar Latin (my favorite variant of same) "excondere" meaning to "hide, put away, store".  I'm seeing my ongoing workshop clean up project in a new light now.

Wastrel is easier, combining Waste with what is referred to as the "pejorative suffix" -rel.   Now we are getting somewhere.

Doggerel is simply poetry bad enough that only dogs would appreciate it, or alternatively of a quality suggesting it was written by clumsy puppies.  It would have been a serious zero stars review for a wandering bard when it was first recorded in the 1630's.  Oddly it seems to have been a surname prior to that.  No doubt a good story there, lost to history.

And while we are on matters loyal and furry.....Mongrel.  It comes from the Proto Germanic word "mangjan" meaning to mix things together.  The suffix was tacked on like the tail of a dubious mutt sometime in the 1500's.

I had expected to encounter more words with this suffix.  But about the only other one that seems to still be in circulation is Pickerel.  It had the implication of a small fish in earlier times, but now it designates two delightful piscenes related to the Northern Pike.  I'd like to catch a Chain or American Pickerel someday.  Additions to my Life Species Caught list are getting harder.

Perhaps in a time when we speak negatively about so many things the sting of a "-rel" designation is fading.  We all appreciate a proper scoundrel, so long as we are not the victims of his or her behaviour.  Wastrelry is in the eye of the beholder.  I devote time, energy and pocket change to my grandchildren in ways that are frankly a bit ridiculous.

And regards mongrels....big fan.  I don't specifically read poetry to mine but I talk to him on a regular basis and he's a great audience.

He has been known to express impatience/disapproval, usually with a shake of his head and a loud sneeze.  But I'm thinking any poetry I recite that contains the words "Walk, Food, and Out" would be well received indeed.

Robotics 2024 - Random Odd Things.....

The FIRST Robotics competition season is over, but the work goes on.  We are starting to recruit for what will be a major training effort.  Graduating nine seniors tends to do that.  And we have lots of things to ponder regards team organization, which areas to concentrate our prototyping on, etc.  But first, and FIRST, lets tidy up some random things that have been sitting around....

No, not some strange new robot mechanism.  The pit crew was very excited when we got them a vacuum cleaner that runs off the same Milwaukee tool battery packs as our drills and other power tools.  It helps keep things clean in our build space and in our competition pit.  The excitement over a vacuum cleaner?   Well, these are small town kids who get excited by the escalators in one of our competition venues....

Testing your robot requires a degree of driving beyond gentle steering.  And with our plywood prototype field elements that poses an issue.  So....we found some bags of cement sitting around the shop!  The stuff taped to the back of the tool cabinet are extra pieces of polycarbonate for robot repairs at the event.  Thankfully these at least were not needed...

Opinions vary, but mine is that this year's game was sub par.  Among other things, the game pieces were not robust.  Immediately everyone's mechanisms started generating bits of orange debris we called Cheezit Dust.  Eventually the rings just broke.

You'd think that all these years of robot stuff and I'd know things like this, but recently I learned the origins of the "Mr. Roboto" song.  As this year's game had a musical theme it should not have been a surprise that a team from up the road a ways had a decorative device based on this:

Pretty clever, it is a wooden "record player" built into the structure and launching mechanism of their robot.  Oh, but it gets cooler....

And as long as I'm trying to embed video clips into a blog running on 20 year old software.....

You may recall that there were a number of team to team awards being given out this year.  We got several including a "Cooperatition Award" made from an old 45 that had been painted and had decals applied to it.  So.....could you still play it?  And what would you hear?????

Feckless and to No Effect

I try to be apolitical in what I write.  Most Screeds on the internet serve no purpose and are penned by folks who are simply looking to validate things they already believe.  Their time would be better spent studying how their beliefs actually work in the real world.

But I will say that the ability of our political leaders to actually get things done seems to have dropped precipitously in recent decades.  I'm old enough to remember when goals like "get to the moon in the next ten years" were taken seriously.  And accomplished.

No, what we have at present are feckless leaders.

Feckless is an odd, little used word.  I'm sure that is in part because it is to the careless ear a bit too much like a profanity that is so freely employed by the vocabulary challenged.  

Like so many of our guttural yet pithy words "feck" is of Scottish origin.  It dates back to the 15th century and means "value or vigor" being as it is a Caledonian shortening of "effect".  

And like so many of our refined and elegant words "Effect" goes back to Latin by way of French.  "Effectus" meaning "Accomplishment or Performance".  Feckless is simply a haggis flavored variation on ineffectual. 

So much goes back to the Romans.  We still have populism versus elitism, still have corruption and nepotism.  

To show how little new there is under the sun I put forward the term nepotism.  It comes from the Italian for "nephew" (originally of course the Latin "nepote") and reflects the practice of steering lucrative jobs to family members.  The subtext being that it was often the Pope's "nephew" , and that this was a universally acknowledged term for an unacknowledged child of said Pope!

Sigh.  Sweetheart deals going to sons, uncles and brothers.  Unacknowledged children.  How little things have changed.

Non Zero Odds of a Stinkbug

I'm occasionally advised that turning a Dixie Cup upside down is Wrong, yet another example of the Error of my Ways.

To which I'd respond that the odds of a Brown Marmorated Stink Bug  (YUCK! ) crawling in there, while not high, cannot be regarded as zero.....

Catfish Geocache

Sometimes there is a logical progression from one "season" to another.  As the robotics storage closet got cleared out I, as usual, got a bunch of stuff that had to come home with me.  I refer to my basement as Area 51.  And some things actually proved useful for geocache construction.

I take my geocaches seriously.  Oh, lots of folks just cram a piece of paper into a film container, maybe add a little camo tape and call it good.  I regard that as unambitious.  I want my containers to look cool and to remain water and damage proof for years.  Trying to keep up roughly 30 caches when I'm busy with other things is a pain.

One series I've had fun with is Strange Fish.  I try to catch some weird denizen of the muddy depths, then commemorate them with a geocache on the spot.  When possible, in the shape of a fish.

One of these was Channel Cat, Strange Fish number 6.  

It was getting a bit weathered and beat up after a couple of winters "in the wild".  Time for a new one.

Lets start with a section of PVC pipe.

When you want something to be waterproof....start with a pipe designed to keep water in.  Should work to keep it out too.  There are end caps that we'll get to shortly, but I wanted this to look a bit "fishier".  A series of plastic discs cut with a hole saw and glued into place.  The bolt is tightened in and serves as an anchor point for the tail.

Like everything else so far, the tail is made of old robot supplies, in this case thin polycarbonate plastic, later covered with black duct tape.

Tail assembled, attached and covered, similar set of fins made the same way.

The head is just an end cap, not glued on of course, with a couple of bolts for eyes.  Memo to self, purchase more stick on googly eyes.  The cache now being near complete it only required a bit of covering tape( the grippy stuff used on baseball bats) and whiskers, and to be released into the wild....

I know it does not look too much like a channel catfish, but I enjoy a bit of whimsey in such matters.  There are various ways to mount these with hangers and such, but the head is press fit well enough that a ground hide should be fine, especially since the paper log and a small pencil are contained inside a heavy duty ziplock.

I look forward to refining the technique further to approximate other Strange Fish.  Good thing I don't live near an ocean, a flounder would be a tough mod!

Tree Shaped Tombstones - Full Kit in Rural Indiana

My brother was off chasing the eclipse recently and ran across some impressive Tree Shaped Tombstones in very rural Indiana.  Civil War vets, obviously.

Here's a long row in Cornettsville, IN.  The one in front has either a generic shroud or perhaps a soldier's cloak hanging off the upper limb.  And a very nice ruck sack and bed roll down at the base.  Ready one supposes to be taken up again in The Next Life.  There's also a musket but you can't see it well in this view.

On the other hand, here's the marker of a certain Jacob McCann in Plainville, IN.  Nearly identical, note the pack and bed roll down and to the right.

Jacob still has someone putting flowers on his grave.  Right down front below the canteen.

Chippewa City - A Gently Fading Ghost Town

When you think of Ghost Towns you usually imagine somewhere out west.  Maybe a prospector struck gold and the town sprang up overnight....only to wither and die when the lode ran out.  A life cycle that starts with nothing, booms into full life, then rapidly fades leaving only some tumbledown buildings to remember that it was ever there.

But there are other life cycles for Ghosts, and Chippewa City has had three or four stages of existence.

Technically it got going in 1825.  That's when a treaty was signed in which the Ojibwa natives gave up rights to some of Wisconsin.  And as a provision of this treaty a combination farm, trading post and blacksmith shop was to be established at a convenient point on the Chippewa River.  After some delays it seems this was actually done in 1838.

There was frankly very little European presence in this area for many years.  One event of note that did occur here was a summit meeting of sorts between the Ojibwa and Dakota tribes.  These groups had been contesting the area for several generations.  They met, gestured a bit, went their own ways and remained antagonistic towards each other.

There is little information on what was at the site later to become Chippewa City in these early days.  A Lyman Warren had a log dwelling and presumably was in charge of things.  He had an Ojibwa wife and remarkably, a library.  This was also the site of the American Fur Company post.

In 1856 there was a rumor that the railroad would come to this spot and build a bridge.  The economic impact of this would be gigantic, probably putting Chippewa City on a path to eclipse its rival, the later established town of Chippewa Falls five miles down stream.  A bank was established, at least on paper.  There land was surveyed and platted.  Homes and of course saloons appeared.

It was an illusion.  Or yet another real estate scam.  After this brief second phase as a true boom town Chippewa City began its long decline.  Here's a plat of the area in the early 1870's.

By 1888 things had changed.  The originally platted village was mostly abandoned and there were newer buildings along a road that had since appeared.  Note the school and post office.  There was also said to be a church.  The peak population of Chippewa City somewhere in this time span was around 200.

Looking at these two maps something very odd strikes me.  The mill is in the wrong place.  Pretty clearly O'Neill Creek has been dammed to form a mill pond, so why is the mill that far away, and up a hillside to boot?  Not all these maps tell the gospel truth, and in my reading I have come across references both to a mill near the pond and an unspecified "Eagle Steam Mill".

The world has passed Chippewa City by.  No railroad.  The lumbering industry sent all the logs right on past to the larger and more powerful sawmill at Chippewa Falls.  But there were still people living here.  The farmland around it was filling up and there was a need for a few basics.  School for the kids.  Salvation for everybody.  I'd be surprised if there was not a store.  

But with the advent of automobiles it became less important to have these things in walking distance.  And the third phase of Chippewa City's life was related to the new mobility.

People wanted recreation.  They wanted to stay in a cabin for a week or two.  Go fishing.  Maybe have a beer or two.  So a resort appeared.  This post card is in the archives of the Wisconsin Historical Society.  It is thought to be from the 1920's.

From the same source, a detail of one of the images....

If that indeed is the proprietor, Prosper LeDuc, then I suspect the photo might be later.  With a name that distinctive you'll pick up a few biographical details.  Prosper was evidently from the area but was living in Montana in 1909, and in Canada in both 1928 and 1934.  He and Mrs. Leduc were married sometime around 1910.  To me these look like people in their 50's, even given the hard work associated with these times.  The first I can definitely place him in Chippewa City is 1938.   

Here's the spot today.

And down by the river, what looks to be remains of a stone dam that once held back the mill pond.

The cabins from (?) the 1940's are slowly falling apart.  The tavern is gone other than a wind mangled sign advertising a brand of beer that is also extinct.  But people still live here.  It is after all a very pretty spot on the river and a string of nice new homes along the river represent a fourth wave of life in the oldest community along this stretch of the Chippewa River.

If such things are of interest I do have a geocache here.....   Ghost Town on the Chippewa

FIRST Robotics 2024 - Final Competition Report

The 2024 competition season is over.  It had its odd moments.  Our first tournament was in very early March.  We went up to Duluth Minnesota, about half way to the Arctic Circle, and had shirt sleeve weather.  Our second event was in early April and was a couple hundred miles to the south.  We set out in a blizzard.  

There was a lot of hard work in the intervening weeks.  The robot was simplified and where possible strengthened.  And unsurprisingly we did much better.  A 6-4 record and a ranking of 16th out of 54 teams.  Perhaps the highlight was a match where we were tasked to play defense against the number one ranked robot at the event.  We handed them their only loss of the weekend.

Ah, but constant pounding took its toll.  By our final matches it was obvious we had stressed the robot past its design limitations.  In retrospect an open eyed look at this year's game should have noted that in an era of powerful new brushless motors, and in a game with no "speed bumps" that survivability needed to take precedence over sophistication.

Finishing 16th one might reasonably expect to be selected as an alliance partner - after all, who does not need a defensive goon? - but it was not to be.  And despite some of our team being disappointed this was a proper call.  When we return to the upper tiers of robots next year it is a principle worth remembering.

But, it was still a good event.  Interestingly we got three bits of recognition from other teams.  Maybe this is a new thing, but I don't recall this happening in prior events...

One is for just being good sports.  One is for the "Hardest Working Robot".  I don't know what RISE design means.  Perhaps Robot Is Still (in) Existence.  The sports cliché "Leaving it all out on the floor" was actually true by our final match, although the bits of debris involved were not vital parts.

I'll have some further robot event pictures and thoughts in a bit.  Perhaps best to close with an official award the team was also given.  Gracious Professionalism.  And yes, that's a mangled part on the table behind the award.

Very nice, and I think a suitable recognition for a team that never gave up, never got discouraged and never stopped having fun.

And so the process of building the 2025 team begins, and with a solid base to start from.

Anyway, here's probably our best match of the event.  Ignore the part where we launched a game piece "up into the stands for a lucky fan".

FIRST Robotics 2024 - Lacrosse Tournament Report 2

 

After our sub par performance at our first event we had a plan going into the rebuild phase and on into our second event.  Make the robot be more durable.  Focus on the things we can do well -in some instances very well - and showcase these.  Drive smart.  Don't break it.  Be ready to fix it if you do.  Towards that latter goal we have a back up intake/shooter device built and ready for a swap....hopefully not needed.

The driving and pit crew maintenance has been excellent and we finished the long Friday session with a 4-3 mark and ranked 15 out of 54.  A stunning reversal from....well, best not mention our ranking in the last event.

Sometimes you get an unexpected chance to show off.  In this game you are only allowed to control one "game piece" at a time.  If one of those bright orange donuts get stuck in your robot you are not allowed to pick up another one.  Hey, it happens.  And when it happened to us our very skilled driver switched over to playing pure defense.  I guess it is not up on Youtube quite yet, but she was able to push the opponent robots around like they were baby buggies.  She enjoys this sort of thing a great deal.

Anyway, good times.  Our Friday matches should be viewable at this link:    Seven Rivers

I specify Seven Rivers because I don't want to watch our Duluth matches again and suggest you don't either.  We were having a bad weekend back then.  Better now, no matter what the outcome of tomorrow's three matches may be.  Redemption does not come often in life, and when it does it only comes with hard work and deep thought.  It is a pleasant thing to experience.

FIRST Robotics 2024 - Lacrosse Tournament Report One

 Our customary Pit Cartoons.

Practice matches.  The robot ran quite well but did take a little damage...and with less rough housing than we'll see tomorrow.

The goats are here.

As is Kilroy.  We'll drop in on him in a bit.

FIRST Robotics 2024 - Tournament Bound Again

And here we go again.  The FIRST robotics competition season runs for six weeks.  This year we had the longest possible gap between two events, doing a Week One and now a Week Six event.  And boy howdy, we needed every day of the interval to pull off a complete rebuild of the robot.

Elevator...gone.  Number of motors, down from 17 to 15.  Lots of pulleys, cables, brackets, wires....adios.  It is a cleaner robot and one that has survived several in testing impacts with solid objects.  We'd like more time of course, but here's what the critter could do with four days to deadline....

Actually not bad.  There's fine tuning to do.  We'd like the spin up to taking a shot to be a little shorter.  And the velocity is certainly enough to take shots from further out once the auto tracking systems are tweaked a bit.  In fact it has enough power that it broke the board on the top of our testing target.  Our drive team are confident they can handle it.

The glitches, and the promise of excellence, both are related to the robot's ability to "see" where it is on the field.  It does this with cameras, processors and software algorithms.  It can find, navigate towards and inhale game pieces.  It can go the the right spot on the field.  It can lock onto a target and adjust angles to make the shot.  Usually.

So, how many eyes does this require?

The robot needs binocular vision for three different kinds of targets, so like many spiders it has six "eyes".  Two of them - BETA and GAMMA - are right on the front of the intake, constantly searching for things that look like large, orange bagels....

Well, we'll see how it all works out.  Of course the main goal is the kids learning things.  By that standard it has been an outstanding season.  Building robots is sort of a secondary....

Nimrods - Prophecy of the Six. Full Movie

Yes, this is one of the odder things that I put in front of you on occasion.  Another feature length installment in the Nimrod story.

It makes more sense - but still not total sense - if you've seen the first Nimrod movie.....

Full disclosure.  I have two sons, one current and one future daughter in law, two grandkids and Bill, my taxidermy squirrel spirit animal involved in these two movies.  Also, depending on how gullible you may be, and additional six grandchildren who have been temporarily misplaced.  Hey, that'll happen sometimes.

Yellowstone Bill

Well here he is, Yellowstone Bill.  And for good measure, the Famous East Side Cave where he resided for a while in the 1890's.  These are from a lengthy article in the Minneapolis papers from 1897.

I'm really not sure how much of the details of his life to believe, but here we go....

His real name was Martin Frank Walker.  He is described as youthful looking - despite being 58 years old - with a magnificent mustache and with dark hair flowing out from under a broad brimmed dark slouch hat.  He was born in Titusville, PA in 1839.  He left home "at an early age" and meandered about Wisconsin and Iowa for a time.  Eventually his family moved to Austin, Minnesota.  This could not have been before the mid 1850s.  But he did not stick around long, and after making a living giving horse breaking lessons for a dollar a pop he joined the Cadwell & Van Arnburg Circus for four years, working as an acrobat.  

He had to leave that career after fighting a duel with a fellow performer and, being the first one able to get out of the hospital decided to put some distance behind him.  It was now the early 1860's and he claims to have been a hunter and trapper in various far Western states, and to have been a scout under General Reno.  His fanciful tales of fighting Indians, while no doubt the hair raising stuff he told visitors to his cave home, are beyond plausible.

He left this life in 1877, returning to Austin, Minnesota briefly before traveling - reasons unspecified - through Asia and Europe.  He came to Minneapolis sometime thereafter, living on a houseboat.  By one account he decided to take it over St. Anthony Falls as a stunt, being later charged with animal cruelty when his dog drowned.  Another consequence was that his son was taken away from him it being considered that he was .."too wild a character"... to have charge of the boy.

Bill occupied the Famous East Side Cave intermittently, evidently for 12 full months on one occasion.  He is known to have lived there in 1893 when he was fined after his dog bit somebody.  He had it set up as a sort of museum/souvenir shop.  A few brief excerpts from the 1897 article should suffice to give the flavor of it.

"What first catches the eye in this big vault is the skin of a giant silver-tip grizzly, one of the finest skins of its kind in Minneapolis.  No mansion in the twin cities possesses a fur rug which could compare to it..."

"The collection of minerals, petrified woods, etc is very large and of considerable value.  There are a number of fine Bad Lands shells, petrified fish enameled, closely resembling mother of pearl and found in moss rocks......There are cave crystals and formations of rock of great beauty....a petrified piece of a mastodon's jaw....and what Walker says is the only petrified sea-snake's head ever found....and portions of a petrified turtle.  Walker says this turtle weighed a ton.  The Times reporter could not dispute the assertion."

Walker lived in the cave with his wife.  His two favorite horses also lived in there with them.  Here's one of them.

It is impossible to say how much this was played tongue in cheek.

Evidently in the late 1890's Yellowstone Bill left Minneapolis for parts uncertain.  In 1908 his son put an appeal in the paper looking for help finding a father he'd not seen in 17 years.  (This would seem to put the houseboat incident in 1891.  There was a partial reply suggesting that Bill had last been heard from in 1899 at which point he was in Northern Missouri and, very appropriately, engaged in the sale of hair remedies!*

I've tried to search online sources for more details, especially for an obituary.  So far without luck.

--------------------------------------

* The houseboat incident seems a bit sketchy.  I did find reference to him living on a boat in April 1891.  It had been burglarized.  The location is given as being near the Bohemian Flats, which is basically right across the river from his later cave habitation.  So....did he bring the boat up through the locks to run it over The Falls?

The East Side Cave (Minneapolis) Revisited

Brewery cave posts have been scarce in recent years.  Honestly I think I've had a look at all that are to be found in a reasonable travel radius and without a degree of risk and trespass that I won't take.

But there are always new things to learn.  And in fact....I think I've been too hasty with my conclusions on a brewery cave in Minneapolis.  Here's what I wrote back in 2019....

A False Brewery Cave

My judgement was based to a considerable extent on this curious photo:

It is said to be The Great East Side Cave.  Other sources claimed it was used for beer storage.  Rather nonsensical at first glance.  Yes, there is a brewery to be seen, but it is on the other side of the Mississippi River, and Mueller and Heinrich were known to have their own extensive cave system.  Why haul it up hill, across the nearby bridge and then back down a fairly steep hill?

But I found an interesting article in a Minneapolis paper just after the turn of the century.  To summarize....

The cave has been known since the earliest settlement of the area, and presumably earlier by the Native inhabitants.  It was at times known as Walker's Cave.  Although a natural cave it pretty clearly has been modified and expanded by the human hand.  I have seen some suggestion that the white sand that made up the walls was at one point mined commercially.

The exact dimensions are a little hard to make out from the article, but it speaks of a 100 foot long main passage, then a right angle turn and another 85 feet.  

After various speculation about pre-settlement use of the place the article says something very specific....that it was used for 12 years as a beer storage cave.

That's actually plausible.  Oh, probably not by the Mueller and Heinrich brewery for reasons mentioned.  But there were two other early breweries in town that needed storage space.  And for geological reasons did not have it close at hand.

Minneapolis came to be because of St. Anthony Falls.  Great for mills and a decided deterrent for any travel further up the river.  It is also the point at which the river is eroding its bed into a deep ravine carved out of the native sandstone.  Upstream, where the John Orth and the Gottlieb Glueck breweries were located, they had no stone faces to excavate storage caves.  It is known that they had small caves dug in Nicollet Island, but these were frankly pretty insufficient spaces.  I could see the East Side Cave being used by one of them.  Probably in the 1870's when their earlier storage spaces became inadequate but before they got mechanical refrigeration in the 1880's.

As to the later history of the cave it was vacant for a while.  Then a sort of hermit named Yellowstone Bill moved in.  Here's a bit about him!

After Bill's departure the cave was used for a time to grow mushrooms.  At some point in the 20th century the entrance was either sealed off or more likely incorporated into the network of steam and utility tunnels that are to be found on the site.  With the location mentioned in the article - one block south of the Washington Avenue Bridge - I think that on my last visit back in 2019 I was standing right on the spot where the picture had been taken.

Note:  You'd think that a character as interesting as Yellowstone Bill would get a few more mentions in the papers of the day.  And you would be correct.  We'll have an extended visit with him shortly.  His restless spirit no doubt lingers in this very spot.

Con Men (and women) 2024

There are a few downsides to the advent of spring.  It's an election year and the political nonsense has commenced.  The latest are various online and in the mail "news letters" that combine happy sounding stories - nuns installing solar panels! - with political pitches.

It is of course a con.  And that got me thinking of all the ways the prefix "con" fits our current political environment.  I mean this of course in a bipartisan sense.  I'll listen to anyone's sincerely held, reasoned out political philosophy.  Might not agree with it but will respect it.  OK, let's go:

Conspiracy - the etymology of this one is interesting.  It means to "breathe together".  The implication is of connivers whispering to each other at such close range they are breathing each other's air.  In the age of AI assistance there might be no breathing involved at all....

Connive - This one is curious.  Like everything on this list it comes from Latin, in this case conivere, meaning to wink at in a sort of knowing way.  Somehow the word derives from nicitare, to wink.  This word seems to exist in English only in the sense of nictitating membrane, an extra eyelid seen in a few mammals, but more often birds.....and a lot of reptiles.  Lizard people.  I knew it.

Condescend - A bit obvious when you look at it.  It started out as meaning that a ruler might out of consideration deign to "step down" to the level of his subjects in some small matter.  You know, maybe allow the hunting of squirrels on Royal Lands for one day of Lent or something.  Human nature being what it is - and always has been - it soon acquired the sense of patronizing that it carries today.

Considerate - A derivation of consider, from considerare, "to look closely at, to observe".  This one is rather fun, it literally means star gazing.  Sidereal being a surviving but seldom used word to refer to distant stars.  I don't think there are many astronomers working in political campaigns these days.  But of course astronomy and astrology were once the same thing and there are still plenty of hacks and pollsters trying to read tea leaves and entrails.

Confuse and Confound - two words with similar meanings and etymology.  The basic concept is to take different things, mix them together and fuse them into one mass that makes it impossible to tell what went into it in the first place.  Nuns, solar panels and a Senator's re-election campaign just have not been stirred very well.  Sorta like simplistic recipe concocted by unskilled cooks.

Concocted - I had not known until starting this chain of "cons" that this is from concoctare, meaning to cook.  The sense of it being a process lacking transparency and probably honesty survives in the sense of "cooking the books".

This list could go on and on.  Doing things together - "con" - is a basic human function and thus incorporated into all languages.  One does wonder if the more cynical spin on many of these words is a modern thing or if ever has it been thus.  I can't say with Confidence.  That word of course means "to have a common faith", Fides being the Latin for same.  Such faith has so often been abused by those looking to directly make a buck or to slither into office to do so.  Confidence men.  And Women, this being the 21st century.  Shortened to Con Men because so few remember the Latin substructure of our language as it has become increasingly Contorted to mean any darn thing that is Convenient.

The Flying Fish of Wisconsin?

It's been a weird non-winter.  As a result some of my spring activities are happening a bit sooner than expected.  Fishing for instance.  Geocaching for another.  And where they overlap, the Strange Fish geocache series where I pay homage to the weird and mostly unloved minor fish species of Wisconsin.  The gimmick is that I catch something strange then put a geocache at the spot.  

It's not an easy task.  I'm limited to places where you can fish from shore, and by the increasing list of fishy weirdos that have already gotten a cache.  In fact.....its getting pretty hard.

So I've taken to scanning Google Maps to try and find new locations.  And recently I spotted something tempting.  An area of DNR owned land that has both Chippewa River frontage and more interestingly, about two dozen abandoned gravel pits.

My first walk around was with Hank the Dog.  He makes it hard to sneak up on anything, so while I did see various little fishies scooting away from shore I could not make any positive IDs.  But they were small, and at least two different species.

So how do fish get into gravel pits?

Sometimes there is proximity to say, a river, and in flood conditions a possible connection.  Pretty unlikely for most of these.  Sometimes people just ignore the rules on such matters and pitch a bunch of fish into new bodies of water in an impromptu stocking scheme.  Maybe....I did see evidence of other people fishing here - old worm containers mostly - and they probably had some reason to do so.

But mostly the fish fly in.

Oh, in egg form.  Ducks and geese love these little ponds.  And hop from one to another in search of whatever it is that makes them happy.  Along the way they pick up various fish eggs that stick to their feet and feathers.  Eventually, and with the right combination of factors, they do the stocking for us.

And those conditions are?  Well for most fish it would have to be a deep enough pond that it would not freeze solid.  Also it is helpful to have some kind of organic material.  Sticks and timber in the water, various aquatic plants (see also bird transport).  Big holes dug into gravel are not ideal for the sort of nutrients that feed small fish and the even smaller bugs they feed on.  Oh, and it is helpful if the water is not so shallow and nasty that oxygen levels vanish later in the year, although even that is sometimes not a deal breaker for bullheads and such.

My first attempt to catch fish here was not a success.  I was using micro-tackle, as none of the fish I saw scooting around were more than about 2 inches long. 

Not a single bite.  I think it is just a bit too early in the year.  Water temperatures, availability of hatching bugs etc.  I'll be back periodically.  In the meantime I did put out a "gateway" cache at the parking lot.  If such things interest you....

The Flying Fish of Wisconsin???

Mr. Magoo goes to Venice?

I should explain that this would be Venice, Florida not Venice Italy.  Confused?  Well, we have to start somewhere.  How 'bout here:

Driving around on our Florida vacation we would repeatedly go over a bridge that was called "The Kentucky Military Institute Bridge".  Hmmm, I see I'm not doing much regards unconfusing things.

We went out for brunch one day in a little French bistro on the corner of this building.  The Historical plaque was fairly helpful.  I think it is worth quoting in full:

During Florida's Boom Period, 1922-1928, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers (BLE) purchased 30,000 acres in Venice, believing it was a sound investment where "rail, trail, and water meet." They hired renowned city planner John Nolen to design Venice. Construction soared, but land sales soon slowed and eventually halted. The BLE pulled out in 1928, and as a result of the economic bust and the Great Depression, Venice became a veritable ghost town.

West Point graduate Robert T. P. Allen established the Kentucky Military Institute (KMI) near Frankfort, Kentucky, in 1845. In 1906, KMI established a Florida winter campus in Eau Gallie, near Melbourne, to improve the cadets' health and academic performance by reducing sick leave through Florida's available year-round recreation. In 1932, Colonel Charles B. Richmond selected Venice as its new winter campus as the previous one had burned. KMI initially rented and later bought the San Marco Hotel (today's Venice Centre Mall), the Hotel Venice (now a retirement center), and the Annex between the two to provide housing for the faculty and cadets, as well as classrooms, kitchen, dining hall, offices and infirmary.

On January 5, 1933, 1500 people welcomed the first KMI contingent of students, faculty, and staff. Venice soon benefitted from the infusion of funds spent by the newcomers and their visiting families and friends; one report stated, "The school breathed new life into the discouraged city." The colorful and inspiring Sunday dress parades, held on the parade grounds (today's Centennial Park and municipal parking lot), quickly became a favorite attraction for residents and tourists; for the cadets it was "testing time" as they were inspected and graded. The cadet band and the Kentucky Rifles, a precision drill platoon, also participated. The Sweetheart Parade, held close to Valentine's Day, honored five local young ladies, each sponsored by one of the five cadet corps. Athletic competitions, such as track meets, were held on the parade grounds, too. In 1970 the Venice campus closed, and KMI sold its Kentucky properties in 1973. Decreased enrollment, higher operating costs, and anti-war sentiments during the Vietnam War contributed to the school's closure. Venice, however, has never forgotten the cadets and their important role in the city's history.

That is a fair amount to unpack.  The history of KMI is long and as I see it, a bit mixed.  Most of their students did not seem to go on to military careers.  Although some did, on both sides of the Civil War.  Some were officers that history remembers well, others....not so much.

In general "Military School" seems to have been a place you'd send your rowdy, out of control kid to try and get them straightened out.  I was a young person at the very tail end of this era and the context of Military School was pretty well established.

Oh, and Mr. Magoo?  Or actually Jim Backus who brought him to life.  (As he also did with Thurston Howell III)!

Backus was a student at KMI for a brief period.  He later described it as "Alcatraz with tuition".  It's not clear whether he made it to the Florida campus in the winter months.  He and his pal, future co-star Victor Mature, seem to have been in trouble from the get go.  

Did the future Mr. Magoo really get expelled for riding a horse through the dining hall?  Was he there making non Magoo-goo eyes at the local beauties in the "Sweetheart Parade"?  

Sources are always slippery when dealing with show biz matters.  I have read that Backus spent his sophomore year of high school at KMI, which could put him in Florida circa 1931.  Alas for our narrative that does not put him in Venice.  KMI operated their winter campus at a variety of Florida locations starting in 1907.  Initially they had purchased the ghost town of Eau Gallie, but had to move from there after their campus burned down.  (And not for the first time btw!)  Jim Backus may have hit one of the brief time periods when a Florida campus did not exist, and had to content himself with misbehaving at the main campus in Lyndon, Kentucky.

FIRST Robotics 2024 - Helios Reborn

In a number of ways the robotics team has "moved up in the world".  Certainly in the obvious ones, larger crew, more sophisticated designs, greater ambitions.  And also by becoming a "two event" team.

FIRST robotics tournaments are huge events.  50 plus teams from around the area and sometimes from far beyond it.  A display of smarts and hard work that just makes you feel good about the state of young people and their education.....contrary evidence in the daily news be damned.

But if you are One and Done due to budgetary or other reasons, you are limited.  In that short a time frame you might have an off season due to any number of factors.  Did it snow hard in your community causing you to miss a bunch of work sessions?  Did you have unfortunate luck in the random pairings of match partners and opponents?  Did you let the kids go nuts and build something far too complex.......

This happened at the end of our practice day at our first event.  The team had to work until they kicked us out at 8pm just to get all it back together.  And the cumulative damage in every other little joint, widget, wire connection and so forth was considerable.  We just never had a chance to get caught up.  I have not watched the video of our matches from this tournament and in fact may never do so.  

It's hardly necessary in any case.  After a quarter century of doing things with kids and robots I have an unusual, actually I suspect unique, ability.  I can see three to four weeks into the future of any robotics campaign.  Oh, not perfectly....its a bit like my vision and hearing generally....I'll miss a few details but can certainly make out the overall situation.

And so the great rebuild began.

This is a rather busy photo, and the bumpers are off.  But you'll notice that the telescoping elevator is gone.  As is the motor that drove it, the motor that drove a flexible "wrist", the springs, pulleys, rigging and brackets that made up the whole complicated mechanism.....adios.

Much cleaner, and we've probably reduced the potential failure points by 2/3rd.  The intake/shooter is also a new design.

It has two rollers on one side and three on the other.  This is to add a degree of "frisbee spin" to the game piece.  I'll post some video presently, but the velocity and trajectory are impressive.

And so it goes.  We still have a lot to do.  Reducing the failure points is not the same as eliminating them entirely.  But it is a solid piece of work.

Onward.